


Rotten Timing

by yunmin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Bad Advice, Flirting, Love in a Warzone, M/M, Pre-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Rogue Squadron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 08:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunmin/pseuds/yunmin
Summary: “Wedge. I can’t figure him out at all.”“It’s not that hard,” Leia replies, tone perfectly casual. “He’s got a case of survivor’s guilt the weight of a planet, a sense of humour black as carbonite diamond, a sense of loyalty so strong it’s a wonder it hasn’t gotten him killed, and the best – and just about only – way of making him see sense is to screw him into the mattress. I’d give that a try.”In which Lando Calrissian is extremely frustrated by the Rebellion's ace pilot, but it's not like Wedge really knows what he's doing either.





	Rotten Timing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



> Spooky asked for: Wedge/Lando, one-upmanship. This has absolutely zero to do with that prompt, but hopefully has several other things that you like instead??
> 
> General warning that Wedge is not entirely in the fittest state of mental health here; nothing bad happens but things are discussed which might be unpleasant for some.

The X-Wing. Incom’s finest achievement; the Rebellion stalwart. An all-rounder, not quite as fast as an A-Wing but with more manoeuvrability, fire power to match any ship of its size, and one sizable advantage on the TIE fighter so beloved by the Empire. Shields.

As far as Lando is concerned, the things are death traps. His opinion on this extends not just to the X-Wings, but the Alliance’s entire compliment of snubfighters. The Millennium Falcon is just fine, and whilst Han is stuck in the blasted carbonite, his to look after. So it makes sense to use it whenever the Alliance sends him out on a mission.

There are plenty of daredevil X-Wing pilots in the service, but Lando keeps getting stuck with the same one flying his escort. A dark-haired young Corellian, in a battered X-Wing that has seen one too many battles. Lando is no stranger to dark-haired Corellians in battered ships, but this one doesn’t half worship the ground he walks on.

(Han hadn’t done that, not _exactly_ , but he’d always regarded Lando with a gleam in his eye, like he couldn’t quite bring himself to tear his eyes away. The feeling had been mutual. When Han had left, Lando had spiralled; he’d done a lot of stupid things in the months that had followed, including a run-in with Hera Syndulla – which he guesses is one of the reasons why Antilles doesn’t trust him. He’d come good there in the end.

But it’s difficult to shake that impression, if Antilles had been told the tale; how he’d almost sold someone into slavery because he was more concerned with his own ideas than with anyone else’s safety _._ He’s made plenty of mistakes since, too. He might be with the Alliance now, accepted a commission as a General, even if he refuses to bow to all their rules and regulations, but he can’t fight the nagging feeling that he should have been here from the start. He made contact with a part of the Rebellion before the Alliance was even signed; now he’s rocked up late to the party.

There’s still time to make a difference.)

It’s the chancellor herself, Mon Mothma – who Lando likes, because she takes very little shit when he attempts to charm her, merely rolling her eyes and sending him on his way – who keeps assigning Wedge to accompany Lando. So Lando can’t exactly do anything to countermand her orders. He’s stuck with this by-the-book pilot – whatever happened to X-Wing pilots’ reputation as daredevils? – who’s got a stick up his arse, and seems devote on infuriating Lando to the best of his ability.

At least he’s pretty. Or Lando might have tossed him out the airlock already.

.

It must be said that Wedge Antilles has one other great advantage; he’s one hell of a pilot. He flies an X-Wing like he was born to it, like he’d never dreamed of doing anything else but flying.

Right now, he’s darting under the belly of a mid-sized Imperial cruiser, leading a merry chase for the four TIE fighters that are following him. The ships defensive cannons are firing, but Wedge is dodging every shot, heading straight and single minded for the shield generators.

Lando is keeping a close eye; the pilots in the TIEs are idiots, not the Empire’s best by a long way, but they still present considerable danger if Wedge takes his eye off the ball. “Rogue One, are you _sure_ you don’t need assistance.” From the co-pilot’s seat, Chewie growls a negative before Wedge manages to respond with one.

“Yeah yeah, he’s capable, still doesn’t mean that what he’s doing ain’t hella dangerous,” Lando shoots back, silencing the comm system once again. The Falcon is far enough away, and hidden behind a moon, and for whatever reason the Imperials haven’t detected it.

Intelligence said this ship was full of idiots, washouts from the lower Imperial academies, but Lando hadn’t thought they’d be this slow. The Falcon and a solitary X-Wing shouldn’t pose much of a threat to a ship like this, not if it was manned properly, and if the X-Wing and the Falcon were piloted by men lesser than Lando and Wedge.

A ping from the sensors say that the shields are down; time for the Falcon to move. Two of the TIEs veer off Wedge as they spot the Falcon, deciding to pursue the larger target. To their peril. One quick word to Chewie and he’s on it, targeting the rear gun on them, and taking down one, and then the other as Lando loops over the cruiser. “Rogue One, how’re you doing with those TIEs?”

“Fine, get on with your half Falcon!” Wedge’s words are short and cursory, like he barely has time to contemplate Lando’s existence, and that he dearly wants to get back to his own concerns.

Lando rolls his eyes, whilst a snort from Chewie indicates that he agrees with Wedge, and that Lando should get on. So Lando flicks on an open comm channel, and says, in the steeliest tones he can muster: “This is General Calrissian of the Millennium Falcon, representing the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and given that myself and my friend here could shoot you out the sky right now, can we have your full surrender?”

“Die, Rebellion scum!” is the immediate response, but it’s followed by some hasty clattering, so Lando waits patiently until someone with sense comes to the lead comm station.

“This is First Officer Helen, I’m authorised to offer you a conditional surrender on behalf of the bridge crew, will that do?” It’s a nervous, young voice, this time.

Lando sighs. He never planned to blow anyone out the sky; this crew is too inept to deserve it. But they carry Imperial clearance codes, ones that the Alliance needs for another mission. “I’ll take it for now. I’m going to dock, and I warn you; I have an angry Wookiee on board who doesn’t like to be crossed.”

Chewie regards Lando with just a hint of betrayal; Lando shrugs. Chewie is intimidating, at least to those who don’t know him. “Of course sir,” is the response.

“And space for my companion in the hangar, please.” A quick check on sensor logs reveals that all the TIEs have long faded to dust, and Wedge is hovering a short distance away, lasers primed and aimed directly at the bridge.

The ship holds no surprises; the First Officer greets them, already having stripped her rank insignia and imperial crest from her uniform – she had no great love for the Empire, Lando soon gathers. The Commander is knocked out cold, the only one with real objections. It doesn’t take long for Lando to find what he needs, and reach an agreement with Officer Helen about bringing her crew back to the Alliance. The Commander – along with a few of the soldiers with families who fear Imperial reprisals were they to defect – are stuffed into an escape pod.

After everything settles, Lando finds Wedge in the hangar, inspecting the Lambda class shuttle that they’ve somehow crammed on board. “Good shooting out there,” Lando comments, the easy praise of a man who is used to leading.

Wedge just huffs, running his hands over cool steel, and Lando wonders what the hell is his problem.

.

On a planet which Lando barely remembers the name of – something like Crestia II, or maybe III – Lando picks the most inopportune moment to ask “So what the hell is Antilles’ deal?”

He’s greeted with a groan from Leia Organa, who is his partner for this mission. She’s an effective one, able to slink past the local Imperials – who don’t seem to be paying any attention to their ‘most wanted’ posters – with the sweetest smile. Only that part has all gone wrong, and now they’re in the middle of a firefight. “You’ve got great timing.” Readjusting her rifle, Leia takes aim through the scope and unleashes three perfect shots, each of them taking out a stormtrooper below. “Gonna elucidate on that any, or am I supposed to guess which one you mean? We’ve got a few floating about the Rebellion.”

“Only one of whom you interact with regularly.” The glare with which Leia greets that statement makes him doubt the veracity of it, and indicates that Lando is wasting his time by not explaining things properly. “Wedge. I can’t figure him out at all.”

“It’s not that hard,” Leia replies, tone perfectly casual. “He’s got a case of survivor’s guilt the weight of a planet, a sense of humour black as carbonite diamond, a sense of loyalty so strong it’s a wonder it hasn’t gotten him killed, and the best – and just about only – way of making him see sense is to screw him into the mattress. I’d give that a try.”

Leia punctuates her statement with a shot. Another stormtrooper goes down, but Lando can’t concentrate on that. He’s taken completely aback by the crassness of Leia’s words. The blushing princess, the favoured portrayal of the holo news even now, when she’s been outed as a Rebellion fighter for four years, is a complete fiction, he knows that. But this is something else entirely. “What?” Lando stutters, completely unsure of what he just heard.

 _Surely_ the Princess of Alderaan didn’t just tell Lando she’d screwed Wedge Antilles.

“It tends to make him relax. And if it doesn’t, then you get a damn good night of sex out of the ordeal, trust me. You’ll feel a little more charitable towards him after that.”

Lando furrows his brow. “Your coping strategy for dealing with one of your senior pilots is to fuck him?” The Alliance is hardly known for its conventional rules, but this is beyond that. They are still a formal military, and shit like this doesn’t fly.

“Off the record off course,” Leia clarifies. “The Alliance never formerly encoded fraternisation regs, for which a million young soldiers offer their unending thanks.” Lando had, briefly, been one of them. But no one has yet held his attention for more than a passing second. Except Wedge. Who doesn’t seem to be a big fan of Lando. Which is Lando’s lot in life, honestly, to fall for men who haven’t got a jot of interest in return. Honestly, Lando would settle for working out how to have a conversation with the guy. “I’m fairly certain Luke gave it a shot when he was Wedge’s CO, and Mon has a soft spot for him and I wouldn’t like to say she hadn’t—”

Lando remembers his aborted attempt at flirtation with the Chancellor. She’s a fine woman, one who Lando would be delighted to be invited to her bed, but she made it clear enough that she wasn’t interested. He doubts that she goes around inviting junior pilots to her bed.

“I don’t want to know how to screw him, I just wanted to know how to make him less ascerbic! Or talk to me in the first place!” Lando throws his hands up in frustration.

“Sex.” Leia is chirpy and unrepentant in her answer. She takes a moment to survey the ground below, where a new legion of stormtroopers is slowly gathering. “Better get going, or we’ll really be in trouble.”

Lando follows her lead.

.

It’s another two weeks before Lando sees Wedge again. In that time, he does manage to verify that he was entirely wrong about the idea that Mon Mothma is above inviting junior pilots into her bed, because it appears she’s currently sleeping with _Wes Janson_ of all people. Lando tries another piece of flirting on her, but it’s shot down immediately; it seems that her tastes run very specifically to dark-haired men in orange, and whilst Lando can also appreciate the look, it’s not something he wants to try for himself.

Wedge might not have much time for Lando, but the other Rogues don’t mind him, so Lando’s invited to participate in the card game that they’ve got going on in the corner of the pilots’ rec room. The mood is miserly. A report crossed Lando’s desk that morning; the Rogues lost a pair of pilots in their last mission, and a resignation had followed. It had cited the Rogues’ dangerous working practices, the increased jeopardy that came with being a Rogue, and well. Lando doesn’t think it went over well.

Most of the Rogues are hardly the best Sabacc players in the world, but they’re passable. A bottle of something makes its way surreptitiously round the table. Lando declines it after taking a whiff. He wants no part of that toxic mess, that smells like it might have been brewed in an engine.

One by one the Rogues fall away, bowing out as their credit lines run out, until it’s just Wedge and Lando playing. Wedge’s strategy is getting increasingly erratic, risky, a contrast to the man Lando has observed in battle. He mentions something to that effect, and Wedge merely shrugs.

“We’re as likely as not to die tomorrow, so why not?” The words are that of a man with a maudlin sense of his own mortality. He lays one final card down; his daring has paid off. Lando knows he can’t beat it.

“You’ve survived this long, don’t be so quick to throw that life of yours away.” Lando tosses his cards on the table, face down, in defeat. “See, you won this one.”

Wedge clears the credit chits to his side of the table, without the slightest hint of satisfaction. “A game of Sabacc ain’t half as hard as surviving a battle.”

“Odds are about the same.”

“Yeah, shit.” Lando raises his eyebrows. That’s not the Corellian spirit – how many times has he had to sit through Han’s ‘don’t tell me the odds’ speech? More than a few times, he’s thought that a little more attention wouldn’t go amiss, but there’s something about Wedge’s tone that unsettles Lando. “Yeah yeah.” Wedge waves his hand with a false display of casualness that is so utterly unlike him that the hair on Lando’s neck stands on edge. “Betraying my fellow countrymen by worrying in the first place. Well fuck them. This galaxy could use a few more people who give a shit.”

Wedge’s eyes are dark, just a little hazy, and it’s clear that the alcohol, along with everything else, has gone a little to his head. He’s never been this candid in Lando’s presence before. “How about you drop this maudlin attitude that you’ve been wearing all evening then, the one where you’re pretending that you don’t care about anything, because you aren’t fooling me, command, or your squadron.”

Leaning back in his chair, the barest hint of a smirk crosses Wedge’s face. The rigidity is gone, in its place – spurred on by the drink, no doubt – is a looseness that doesn’t quite suit. This Wedge could be a whole hell of a lot of trouble in a completely different way. “Yes sir,” he says with enough cheek to make even the easiest-going senior officer stand on edge. “Didn’t know you cared so damn much. Should have joined us sooner, maybe, if you’re gonna lecture me on my attitude – what right do you have to tell me shit? I’ve been through the wars, in this war—”

“I did the best I could to keep the people I was responsible for safe.” Lando cuts Wedge off with a certainty that surprises even him. He knows his words are right, the truth settling within him. He did all he could. And Wedge is just trying to get a rise out of him, and Lando won’t meet him. “And now I fight alongside you to try and bring them a galaxy in which they can be safe, and part of that means ensuring you are capable of doing your job.”

“I’m one of the best pilots in the fleet.”

“You’re no good to anyone if you’re constantly assuming you’ll go down in flames. That’s not bravery, or knowing the odds Wedge, it’s—” _suicide._ The word dies on Lando’s tongue as Wedge stiffens.

It was the wrong thing to say. Almost say.

It was accurate, and that _terrifies_ Lando.

“I’m not—” Wedge can’t quite finish his denial. He can’t say it. It wouldn’t be true.

If Lando could prove it, if the Alliance wasn’t so desperate for Wedge’s skills, Lando would have him off the flight roster in an instant. But there is a war on, and that means they have to live with things that aren’t ideal.

“Forget it.” Lando stands up, clearing the scant remainders of his credit back into his pocket. “Doesn’t matter. Go to bed, sleep it off, get up tomorrow and go back to being an X-Wing ace, not whatever this is.” Lando gestures at Wedge. “I don’t like you like this.”

Lando’s exit route takes him past Wedge, and Wedge catches his wrist in a strong grip as he attempts to leave. “Does that mean you like me?” Wedge is on his feet suddenly, in Lando’s space, eyes shining that dark colour that Lando is never sure about, and Lando doesn’t have time to form a response before Wedge kisses him.

He gasps into the kiss, in shock and surprise, and Wedge’s tongue flicks into his mouth. Lando can taste the alcohol on his tongue, cheap rotgut in an idiotic Corellian pilot’s mouth, Lando has played this game before and it has not ended well. In letting Wedge kiss him, he’s making a grave error in judgement, the sort of thing which is stupidly reckless.

Wedge breaks away. He regards Lando for a single, too-long moment, before stepping back and releasing his grip. Lando is still too surprised to do anything. Another moment, and Wedge is walking away, and Lando doesn’t know what he’s supposed to think.

.

“What the hell did you say to Wedge?” Leia hisses at Lando in passing.

“Nothing!” is Lando’s reply, but he’s aware of the futility of it; you’d have to be a fool to not notice that Wedge has tightened up recently, coming into his own as the _commander_ of Rogue Squadron, not just a fill-in who doesn’t think he’s supposed to be there.

Leia’s mouth pulls into a wicked smile. “Ahh.” There’s an assumption there, that Lando has followed the advice Leia gave him, and it’s faulty; but Lando has thought about it, can’t stop thinking about it, ever since Wedge kissed him.

So he lets her be, because honestly, she’s not wrong. Screwing Wedge into the mattress probably would do him the world of good.

.

It’s early morning – or at least, it is by ship’s time, not that that means anything to anyone really. Lando is taking one last look round his office, attempting to commit the whole thing to memory before he’s cast out into the desert wastes, when Wedge slips round his door. “I hear they’re sending you to Tatooine,” he says.

Information, barely a week old, had confirmed that Han was located in Jabba’s palace. It was from a reliable source, but Lando and Luke knew enough about Jabba that mounting an attack without inside information was a fool’s errand; so, it’s Lando’s job, with the least recognisable characteristics of the four of them, to infiltrate. He leaves in three hours. “If we’re gonna get Han back, someone needs to go, and it might as well be me.”

Wedge nods. He does it like he understands the responsibility of going after your best friend and dragging them back from hell itself. Maybe he’s done that. Lando doesn’t really know him well enough to say. “Tatooine’s a shit hole.”

“I’m aware.”

Uninvited, Wedge takes the chair in front of Lando’s desk, swivelling it around so h can rest his arms on the back of it. “Yeah, Luke will have given you the salient points, but he grew up there. He can’t really explain what it’s like. Whatever he’s told you, it’s about a thousand times worse.”

From Luke’s description – along with the scant information in the Alliance data files – Tatooine is only a step away from hell. But in some ways, so was Cloud City, built in the upper atmosphere above a planet of Tibanna gas. Tatooine is a habitable world, without any modifications – well, except the need to bring a bundle of vaporators along with you – and there is food, water in the atmosphere, and it’s not like the core of the planet wants to eat you whole. There are worse places in the galaxy, and Lando’s visited a bunch of them. His tolerance may be higher than the average person’s. “And you’re an expert?”

From what Lando knows, Wedge hasn’t even been to Tatooine, but he suspects he’s wrong about that too. “Not an expert, but Booster took me there once as a kid. Well, thirteen. He said I should see a bit more of the Galaxy. It was _hell._ I swore after that week that Booster was certifiable.”

“Booster?” There’s a man who Lando has heard of, who had dealings on Tatooine, but he can’t be the man who Wedge is talking about.

“Terrik.” Or he is.

Lando lets out a low whistle. “Well, turns out there’s something interesting about you after all. How’d you get tangled up with Booster as a kid and not end up a smuggler?”

“He was a family friend; my parents would have killed him if he ever tried to recruit me.” Wedge is surprisingly nonchalant about his connection to one of Corellia’s famed smugglers. “And who said I didn’t?”

Lando files that piece of information away for later. “So, have you got anything useful to tell me, or have you just come here to inform me that Tatooine is going to be hell to live with?”

That was not the only reason Wedge came. He does turn out to have a moderate amount of semi-useful information, gleamed from his own experiences and from stories from Luke, and another pilot he knew once, by the name of Biggs. Some of them even make Lando laugh. That helps. Dread has settled in his stomach, ever since he and the others decided that Lando needed to go to Tatooine, and Wedge’s smile and quick words help lift it. It’s still going to be bad, but Lando can forget, for just a little while.

After Wedge finishes recounting a tale, he cocks his head at Lando. He bites his lip, looking almost speculative, then asks: “Did I kiss you last week?”

Lando just – only just – keeps his mouth dropping from surprise. He tries to play it cool. “You did. Was it that forgettable?”

Wedge regards Lando with no small degree of scrutiny. Finally, he sighs. “Not at all. Thought I might have dreamt it though.” Lando loses all the words he was going to say. Is that an admission that Wedge wanted the kiss, that it wasn’t some spur of the moment thing? “Look, I know that I have god-awful timing, but can we try that again when I’m not drunk off my face and in a depression spiral?”

What—

Lando blinks several times at Wedge in quick succession. He’s still there. Lando isn’t imagining things. But he heard right; Wedge wants to kiss him. “You really do have awful timing,” Lando says, because he is _leaving_ , and who knows if he’ll survive Jabba’s clutches, or if Wedge will still be alive when he comes back. But they’ve still got a little time, so Lando stands up, making his way round the desk so he can drag Wedge out of his chair and tip his head up and kiss him.

A soft moan emerges from Wedge’s mouth, as he clutches his hands in the soft material of Lando’s shirt. Lando pushes him back against the desk, sliding a thigh between Wedge’s legs and wondering why on earth he didn’t try this sooner. Wedge’s mouth is sweet under his, kissing back with a quiet fierceness that Lando didn’t expect. It’s completely different from their last kiss, which was uncertain and full of a degree of wild desperation on Wedge’s part. This time, it’s mutual, wanted and appreciated.

When they break the kiss, Wedge stares at Lando for a long moment, observing his entire face. A flush has coloured his cheeks, Lando knows that, almost embarrassing but not because he likes Wedge, more than he ever thought he would, and he’s at a point in his life where that’s okay with him. “I know my timing’s rotten,” Wedge whispers. His head fits into the crook of Lando’s neck almost perfectly. “How much time do we have before you leave?”

Lando checks his chrono. “Not enough.” He strokes a hand down Wedge’s jawline; it’s sharp and strong, and there’s the barest hint of stubble in a few places where Wedge must have been in a rush that morning. A finger beneath Wedge’s chin tilts his mouth up to meet Lando’s again. Lando tries to memorise Wedge’s mouth, his lips, his taste; this entire moment. It’ll be something to keep to himself, a memory to treasure, to remind him that there’s the potential for something good in his life. “Force.” He exhales, lips not breaking apart from Wedge’s, breathing the words into his mouth. “You better still be here when I get back Wedge.”

“I’ll try and stay safe.” It’s all he can promise. Anything more would be a lie, and Lando knows it. Wedge slips a hand round Lando’s waist, pulling him in close. “I’ll try. I’m not fucking around when I say it’s dangerous.”

“I know you’re not.” Lando sweeps a hand through Wedge’s hair; it’s surprisingly soft. “I just like to get a chance to see if…” He trails off. However he was going to end that sentence is too many words, too soon. So he kisses Wedge again, silently counting down the last minutes he gets to spend with this man he unexpectedly adores.

“Yeah,” Wedge mutters into Lando’s mouth, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll live to see it.

.

Alive – though only barely – Lando flies back to the Alliance fleet on the Millennium Falcon, alongside Chewie, Leia, and an unfrozen Han, who seems to be recovering his wits at a pace. The Falcon docks with Home One, and Lando says his goodbyes to the rest of them quickly – Han needs to see a proper medbay before they all debrief, so he’s got time – and heads to the Hangar.

Rogue Squadron’s X-Wings are in the hangar, twelve of them, none looking the worse for wear. Lando breathes a sigh of relief. It’s no guarantee, of course, but it’s a good omen. He rounds a corner and finds Wedge, sitting on a crate, consulting a data pad, biting his lower lip in frustration. A couple of the other Rogues are dotted about the hangar, decompressing in their various individual ways, but Lando only has eyes for Wedge.

Wedge lifts his eyes at the sound of Hobbie’s indignant cry as Janson tackles him to the floor, and catches sight of Lando. He ignores his pilots, sets the datapad down and slips off the box he’s sitting on, making his way over to Lando. Lando slides his hands in his pockets, attempting to look nonchalant – he can’t let his entire reputation go – but he can feel his mouth working its way into a giddy smile, because force damn it, he really does like Wedge, and he’s _missed_ the bloke, and it’s just a delight to properly see him.

Wedge’s pace is just a little faster than ordinary; he stops a foot clear of Lando, appraising him. “You don’t look too badly off, for someone who spent a couple of month’s in Jabba’s palace,” he says.

“Yeah well, I’m pretty glad that Jabba’s dead.” Lando wants to reach out and touch, pull Wedge close. But Wedge is maintaining a distance and they’re in front of not just Rogue Squadron, but dozens of support personnel, and they never did have a conversation about whether they wanted to make their relationship public.

Wedge raises his eyebrows. “Dead?”

“The Princess. Things went a little awry.” Lando makes a motion with his hand, waving the details away. Wedge is familiar enough with the antics of Skywalker and co. “Glad to be back. Any hope of some peace and quiet and a chance to catch up?”

“I’m booked to run sims with the kids in half an hour, but my evening is clear and yours.” Wedge looks a little bashful, but Lando smiles in appreciation. That’ll give him a chance to get properly clean and have some sleep. “And peace and quiet ain’t on the radar. There’s been no formal announcement, but something’s definitely up; I expect they’ll brief you on it first chance they get.”

Lando groans, just a little, though he didn’t really expect anything else. “It’s not the welcome home you might have wanted, but I’ve got a bottle of whiskey in my quarters and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to share it,” Wedge suggests.

“Darling,” the endearment falls off Lando’s tongue with accustomed ease, but Wedge’s eyes widen like he wasn’t expecting it, “your company is the only welcome home I wanted.”

“Oh.” Wedge steps forward, into Lando’s space and says; “In that case.” His hands move to the collar of Lando’s cape, and he pulls the man into a kiss. It’s a little rough, and they still haven’t quite worked out the height difference – Wedge still seems unaccustomed to kissing people taller than him – but it’s _nice_ and honestly? Lando really could get used to this. There’s hooting echoing behind them – probably Wedge’s pilots, but Lando couldn’t give a fuck right now – he just concentrates on kissing Wedge, long and slow, taking his chance because who knows if there will be another, Lando is lucky to get this homecoming.

They part; Lando strokes a hand down Wedge’s jaw and looks him over properly. He’s smiling, eyes bright, and he looks a world away from the man who Lando left a couple of months ago, who had darkness bleeding at the edge of his psyche. Lando doesn’t dare to hope that Wedge is completely shot of that suicidal ideation, but he looks happier; Lando won’t have to worry about him, anymore than he already would, with whatever this thing that is coming is. “It’s good to see you,” Lando whispers, leaning back in for another kiss.

Wedge responds by wrapping his arms around Lando’s neck and pointedly ignoring the loud jeers from his gathered pilots, and yeah; Lando likes this.


End file.
